How tough are Massachusetts dogs? So tough their K-9 compatriots shoot firearms on the job.

Of course that’s not exactly how things went down over the weekend in Lawrence, Mass., a town 30 miles north of every single Ben Affleck movie ever made (except for Argo. That one was a little further away). But like Argo, a little embellishment makes for a much better opener.

What actually happened, as the Eagle-Tribune reports, is that a local officer on duty heard a trio of gunshots at around 2 a.m. on Saturday. He raced to the nearby scene and witnessed three suspects peel off in a getaway car that unfortunately did not look like this.

The officer called for backup and started to chase the vehicle o’ suspects, which “fled at a high rate of speed”.

Police managed to catch up to the lead-footed crew when, in a ballsy but misguided attempt to dispose of the evidence, 28-year-old suspect Jose Calderon allegedly jumped out of the car and buried a mysterious object in a snowbank.

The unexpected slowdown allowed police to catch up and remove the men from their car at gunpoint. Shortly after, an officer found a 9mm bullet casing in the backseat.

Meanwhile, someone’s front yard had just acquired a new Ruger. Ivan the K-9 and his human partner, Lt. Jonathan Pickles, set out in search of the weapon.

Like the badass pooch he is, the three-year-old German Shepherd tore through the snowbank as soon as he picked up the scent. But in an unexpected sequence of events, Ivan’s paw accidentally set off the gun and sent a shot barreling toward a family home.

Cesar Brito and his two nieces were asleep inside. Thankfully no one was hurt.

“I think they were sleeping the whole time so they didn’t even notice anything was happening,” Brito told Fox News.

“Like I said, I never seen no bullet or anything, so I think we’re good,”

Less fortunate in the distinguished history of animals discharging firearms was a Belarusian hunter who got into a tussle with a fox and lost.

Reuters notes that in January 2011, the hunter approached a fox he’d just wounded with the intent of finishing the job. The fox, on the other hand, wasn’t having any of it and fought back.

The pair engaged in a Dickensian battle of wits and brawn that ended when the clever creature, exacting karmic retribution for hundreds of years of dubious English tradition, set off the rifle trigger and blasted a bullet into the man’s leg.

The fox escaped, but it was wounded so it’s not such a happy ending.

And because you can’t leave cats out of a story involving attempted murder, here’s a bit about a Michigan man who ended up in the hospital when one of his feline friends knocked his 9 mm handgun off the kitchen counter and sent a bullet into his abdomen.

Naturally, if the other cats had been armed, the whole thing could have been avoided.